Jail for gecko thieves

Submitted by shelley.fischer
on Sun, 08/05/2011 - 23:20

Two German men who admitted travelling to New Zealand to steal rare native geckos have been jailed.

Dieter Ernst, 56 and Thorsten Richartz, 47, were sentenced to four and a half months jail in the Dunedin District Court after they pleaded guilty to separate charges of hunting protected wildlife and possessing four rare jewelled geckos.

The geckos came from two sites on Otago Peninsula and one site on Banks Peninsula.

It was the longest sentence the men could receive given their guilty pleas, the Department of Conservation said.